Orbit FAQ

What is Orbit?

Orbit is a project designed to be a repository for third party libraries that are approved for use in Eclipse projects. If the incoming libraries are not already bundles then Orbit committers will work to create a bundle that is suitable for use in Eclipse projects.

Does Orbit replace or affect the Eclipse Foundation legal process?

NO! Orbit holds only libraries that have been approved by the standard legal process. Projects must still follow this process to request permission to use libraries in their releases.

If a library is approved for use in "all" projects, do I still have to go through the legal process?

As of this writing, all projects must request permission to use any third party libraries. More generally, this is a question for the legal team. Orbit does not affect the IP policy and legal process.

Do projects have to use the Orbit bundles?

This is not explicitly required however we do hope that the Release Review process is enhanced to require justification for using a library in your release and not using the corresponding bundle from Orbit. There may well be valid scenarios here the Orbit bundle is not appropriate but projects are strongly urged to share as much as possible.

What if I don't want to put the library I need into Orbit?

That's fine but you will be foregoing the help and support you would get of the greater Orbit community as well as preventing others from sharing in your efforts. Keep in mind that you may have to justify this approach when it comes time for your release review.

Who are the committers in Orbit?

The following is the current list of committers and the projects they represent. Note that those with ?? after their names are potential committers.

Committer

Project

Bjorn Freeman-Benson

Dash

DJ Houghton

Eclipse

David Williams

WTP

Grahame Grieve??

OHF

Hubert Leung

TPTP

Jeff McAffer (Project Lead)

Eclipse

John Graham

DTP

Pascal Rapicault

Eclipse

Richard Gronback??

GMF

Simon Kaegi

Eclipse

Tom Watson

Eclipse

How do I become a committer in Orbit?

Orbit committers are generally committers from other Eclipse projects that have a need for a third party library. These people come to Orbit with an approved library and propose to include it in Orbit. If they are not already a committer and their project does not have any committers, they can become a committer by agreeing to bundle and maintain the new library. Accordingly, they will then be responsible for the care and feeding of that library and the corresponding bundle.

How do you name bundles containing other people's code?

That's a great question! See the documentation and guidelines on Bundle Naming.

Which libraries are managed in Orbit

The complete list is of bundles available from Orbit is on the Orbit download page. As the project is just getting underway, we don't have a downloads page so here is a list of the bundles that will be included in Orbit.

Library

Bundle

Version

Ant

org.apache.ant

1.6.5

Axis

org.apache.axis

1.3.0

Batik

org.apache.batik

1.6.0

Batik PDF

org.apache.batik.pdf

1.0 beta2

Cactus

org.apache.cactus

1.7.2

Commons Logging

org.apache.commons_logging

1.0.4

ICU4J

com.ibm.icu

3.4.4.1

Jasper Compiler

org.apache.jasper.compiler

5.5.15

Jasper Runtime

org.apache.jasper.runtime

5.5.15

Jetty

org.mortbay.jetty

??

JMX APIs

javax.management

??

JMX Remote APIs

javax.management.remote

??

Junit

org.junit

3.8.1

Junit 4

org.junit4

4.1.0

Log4j

org.apache.jakarta_log4j

1.2.8

Lucene

org.apache.lucene

1.4.3

MX4J

net.sourceforge.mx4j

3.0.1

MX4J Remote

net.sourceforge.mx4j.remote

3.0.1

OSGi services API

org.eclipse.osgi.services

3.1.100

Servlet API

javax.servlet

2.3, 2.4

Servlet JSP API

javax.servlet.jsp

??

SSH

com.jcraft.jsch

0.1.28

Tomcat

org.eclipse.tomcat

4.1.30

UDDI4J

org.uddi4j

2.0.4

WSDL4J

org.wsdl4j

1.4.0

WSIL4J

org.apache.wsil4j

1.0.0

Xerces

org.apache.xerces

2.8.0

XML Pull

org.xmlpull.v1

??

XML RPC

org.apache.xmlrpc

3.0.0

How does Orbit manage multiple versions of the same library?

Luckily OSGi supports multiple versions of the same bundle installed and running at the same time so this does not present any particular runtime problems. At development time however there is a challenge of project naming. Since the Eclipse convention has been to use the bundle symbolic name as the name of the project, there would be a conflict if two versions of the same project need to be in the workspace at the same time. We still need to weigh the options here.